We image an entire 96‐well plate with a megapixel camera array with enough resolution and high enough frame rate to track, segment, and estimate the posture of C. elegans over time.
All compound doses in the speed/tail curvature space, with points and lines showing the mean and standard deviation of biological dose replicates. On average, 12 biological replicates were collected per compound dose, together with 601 DMSO replicates, across at least 3 different tracking days for each condition. Several compounds, including the serotonin receptor antagonist mianserin (blue), glutamate‐gated chloride channel activator emamectin benzoate (purple), and vesicular acetylcholine transporter inhibitor SY1713 (red), have a strong effect on the worms' behavioral phenotype. They can be distinguished from the DMSO control (black) and from each other based on speed and tail curvature alone. Not all compounds are well separated in these two dimensions (gray points). Inset images are samples that show postural differences.
Sample worm skeletons over time show the effect of the compounds highlighted in (B) on motion.
Number of features significantly different from the DMSO control at a false discovery rate of 1% for each compound, grouped by mode of action. The pre‐stimulus, blue light stimulus, and post‐stimulus data are shown separately (a total of 3,020 features are tested for each assay period). The percentage of significantly different features is highest for the blue light stimulus recording.
